


How To Earn a Favor

by PinkPandorafrog



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Losers (2010)
Genre: Aromantic, F/M, Gen, rated for Darcy's potty mouth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 20:23:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4536057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkPandorafrog/pseuds/PinkPandorafrog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy had a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So when the cafe she was trying to have a quiet moment with some coffee and some work somewhere that wasn't actual work erupted in gunfire, she wasn't entirely surprised.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Earn a Favor

Darcy had a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So when the cafe she was _trying_ to have a quiet moment with some coffee and some work somewhere that wasn't actual work erupted in gunfire, she wasn't entirely surprised.

She got down on the floor, pulling the heavy round table down in front of her. It would actually _stop_ bullets, it was just a wooden table, but maybe it would slow them down enough to keep them from, you know, killing her.

Her laptop went into its case and she pulled out her TASER, clutching it tightly in her hand as she flattened herself to the floor as much as she could. She didn't want any part of whatever was happening, but if part of it was determined to find her, as _usually_ happened, she was going to give it a good zap. She only hoped these were humans, because the TASER was kinda iffy with aliens. It had worked on _Thor_ when he'd been made mortal or whatever, but it hadn't worked on Dark-Elves.

Not that she had had a TASER in London, of course. That would have been illegal.

Some jackass in urban camouflage with no distinguishing identification came around the side of her table, assault rifle pointed _at her_ , so she let him have it. As the man fell to the floor, twitching and jerking, Darcy bit her lip. _Shit_. This probably meant a call to Jane. And not, 'Hi, how are you doing,' but, 'Hey, I might need one of your boyfriends' hotshot legal team.' Fuck.

She looked up from the jackass on the floor. She was going to need an exit point. Dude hadn't gone unconscious, and probably wasn't going to be _happy_ when he was able to move again.

She was aware, though, that a man in an open black suit jacket, no tie, was watching her with a smile on his face. He was smiling? He was saying something, not that she could hear him over the chaos. In addition to weapons fire, people were running and screaming. Sirens, she could hear sirens off in the distance. This way... Yup. Definitely a call to Jane.

The man was gesturing to her, though. Darcy gave it a quick thought. Stay and continue getting shot at, or... He appeared to have a way out. And whatever was going on, even if he was the “bad guy,” at least she'd be alive to be able to get away from him.

She tried to wait for a lull in the gunfire, but it just wasn't happening. So Darcy took a deep breath, pulled herself up into a crouch, and lunged across to the corner of wall he was hiding behind. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw someone take a bullet to the chest and fall. So they had a sniper. That was... News.

The man grabbed her elbow and pulled her back along the hallway, away from the noise. A glance up at him showed he was listening to something, and then he pushed one of the gray doors open, yanking Darcy sharply after him. She was going to have finger-shaped bruises around her arm, but that was definitely better than bullet-related injuries.

He turned another corner, and then there was another door, and he burst out of it into the bright sunshine. A car was waiting for him, some yellow sedan that looked like it had seen better days. The man reached past her and yanked open the door to the backseat, practically tossing her inside. He slammed the door shut behind her and got into the front passenger side, and it seemed like the car was already moving.

“What the fuck did you do, Clay?” the driver asked, and Darcy pulled herself up from where she was sprawled across the blue bench seat to look at him. He had close-cropped hair, not _quite_ shaved off, and he sounded _pissed_.

“One of them was advancing on my position,” the man who'd grabbed her, Clay, informed the driver. “She tazed him. I couldn't let them kill her after she saved my ass.” He sounded completely unbothered by the other man's temper.

Darcy let out a long sigh. Yup. She was going to have to call Jane. Somehow, though, this didn't exactly seem like the right time for a phone call. She stayed quiet, watching the streets of Norfolk speed by at what definitely wasn't a legal speed.

“What's your name?” It took her a second to realize the man who'd grabbed her was talking to her, she looked up to see a pair of brown eyes staring at her as he looked back over his shoulder.

“Darcy.” There was no point in lying about it. The kind of people who had a _sniper_ were probably the kind of people who could easily find out if she was lying or not, and lying was never interpreted as friendly.

“Frank Clay.” He looked over her for a minute. “You really saved my ass back there.”

“Trust me, humans are a lot easier to deal with.” Fuck, she'd actually said that out loud. SHIELD had paid her a lot of money to never talk about that. Well, she hadn't _said_ aliens or anything like that. Maybe she meant lions. Yeah. She could totally be a zoologist that specialized in carnivores or something.

Clay didn't even bat an eye, though, just turned back around to look out of the windshield.

The driver took a particularly hard turn at high speed, and Darcy found herself sprawling across the back seat again. “Fuck!” Seat belts were invented for a _reason_ , and as soon as she was able to push herself upright again, she pulled one down over her shoulder, buckling herself in behind Clay.

She'd lost track of where they were, but eventually they stopped. It looked like some sort of old warehouse, and the second the driver shut off the car, both he and Clay were getting out.

Darcy took her time unbuckling her seatbelt. There were... Five of them. And the driver appeared to be arguing with Clay. The voices carried, but the words didn't. Darcy unbuckled her seat belt and reached into her laptap case for her phone. She didn't quite manage to get there, though, the door beside her opened.

A blond man in glasses was standing there, and she looked up at him with her eyebrows raised while he looked like he was trying to find the right words. “Why do you have a SHIELD file?”

Darcy took a deep breath and let out a long sigh, pulling her hand back out of her laptop case. He didn't _seem_ particularly threatening, but it was probably in her best interests to appear as harmless as possible. Which really wasn't hard. She was a PR rep, not some trained badass. “There was a thing in New Mexico.” Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “And then another thing in London, and in between there was a thing in New York and they decided that my friend and I needed to be in protective custody- which is a load of bullshit if you ask me.” Not that she was still bitter or anything. Or that he'd asked. “They consider me a person of interest, which means that as soon as they can figure out a way to do it without a scary teams of lawyers getting involved, they're going to suck me into the SHIELD machine.” All of that was on her SHIELD file, so there was no point in _not_ telling him.

“Do they have you under surveillance?” The idea seemed to alarm him a little, and she shook her head quickly.

“Nope.” She shrugged. “Thanks to the aforementioned team of lawyers.”

He turned away from her, his forearm braced along the top of the car door. “Colonel, I gotta be honest, I think she's good.”

“We _just_ went through this! _You_ got shot.” The driver, the anger making his voice carry clearly over to her. “Better just to kill her now, because if SHIELD finds out about us...” He sounded deadly serious about it, too. That wasn't just an idle threat. But... SHIELD didn't care for them? Interesting.

Darcy's eyes widened, her breath stalling in her throat. She scrambling out of the car, her shoulder bumping against the blond's arm as she stood up beside him. They were all looking at her now. “Wow. Okay, I feel obligated to tell you that my bestie is in a serious relationship with Tony Stark and Hawkeye, and killing me would probably make them, uh, less than pleased.”

“You're lying.” The driver's accusation came quickly, brushing aside everything she'd just said.

“I'm not. Dr. Jane Foster? There should be mention of her in my SHIELD file. I mean, I know it's not _really_ officially public knowledge that the three of them are together, but they're kinda not very subtle about it. Well...” She paused for a moment, thinking. “Tony isn't. Or Clint, really. And Jane just gets all giggly and flustered, it's really...” She trailed off, looking around at the expressions that ranged from hostility through disbelief, and right on up to amusement. “Adorable?” She pulled her hands up, raising them above her head to convey that whole no-danger idea.

Clay was chuckling. He seemed to be at least nominally in charge, and amused as hell by her, so that was... good, right? He could keep the other guy from killing her, maybe? “This could help us, Roque. Think about it.”

“Sure...” Darcy pressed her lips together and nodded. “Happy to help, especially if it keeps me from meeting my untimely demise. Uh...” She glanced around between all of them again. “Quick question, though, who _are_ you guys?”

“We don't exist,” Clay said.

Darcy shrugged. “Okay.” That was fine. Technically Sif didn't exist either, although- Wait. Colonel Franklin Clay. Yup, she'd seen them all on the news. “Oh, shit. I know exactly who you guys are.” There was a moment where time seemed to stand still. Roque, the driver, had a gun pointed at her, who knew where he'd pulled that from. She tried to ignore him the best she could, although a cold finger of fear and adrenaline licked up her spine. “So which branch of the government fucked you guys over?”

Silence. Then... “How did you know that?” A bald guy standing over there sort of by Roque was in clear disbelief.

“Uh...” Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. Didn't she just say she was on SHIELD's watch list? “Government cover up is basically my middle name at this point. It wasn't even very well done, if you know what you're looking for. It was like their story was slapped together at the last minute, it's _full_ of holes. Dude, everybody's talking about it.”

Clay's hand came up on Roque's arm, pushing it down until the gun was pointed at the dirt-covered concrete. It wasn't away, but that was definitely better than it being pointed at her head. A degree of tension ease from her shoulders. “What do you mean, everybody?”

“Well, not _everybody_ everybody, but, like...” She sighed, bringing her hands down and resting them on her hips. “You have to be careful talking about this shit. The US government is big and scary and has ways of making people disappear. I mean, obviously.” Because remember who she was talking to. “But Rising Tide is all over it, which means that people are seeing it. All of the people who _do_ talk about this kind of thing _are_.”

Everyone seemed to be looking at the guy with glasses who was still standing in her personal space, or maybe she was standing in his. He had been there first. He shrugged, looking a little shame-faced. “I haven't checked, I've been a little preoccupied with Ma- with _things_.” He cut a quick glance to Darcy to see if she'd noticed his slip-up, but she gave him her very best wide-eyed innocent look.

“We could probably get this cleared up for you. I mean, it would take a while, bureaucracy moves at a snail's pace, but SI could probably take care of this whole thing. Or, if nothing else, give you somewhere to go that camouflage guys won't be trying to kill you in the middle of Virginia.”

“We've got something that needs doing,” Clay told her.

Darcy shrugged. “Suit yourself. But, like... Maybe hanging out where you can be visually surveilled isn't the best idea?”

Without a word, Roque turned and headed for a door in the side of the warehousey building. The man beside her nudged her with his elbow. “Come on inside,” he told her.

Darcy nodded and followed him towards the door, with one glance back at her laptop case where it was still on the floor between the seats. The man beside her, Captain Jake Jensen unless she was wrong, swung the car door shut behind her. Well, she could get it sometime hopefully soon. And her phone. To call Jane.

The inside of the warehouse was dim, and it took a second for Darcy's eyes to adjust. When they did, she realized she was looking into sort of a makeshift base of operations for the group. There were a couple of long tables scattered with weapons and computer equipment, and she made very sure that she didn't go anywhere near there. Because while she was still alive, Roque didn't seem too thrilled with her continued presence, and she didn't want to give him an excuse to, you know, make her _not_ still alive.

She stopped, far away enough from the door that it wouldn't look like she was going to make a break for it, and rested her hands on her hips again. “So... What's the plan?”

Clay walked towards her. He was a very tall man, and she had to crane her head back to continue looking in his face when he stopped just in front of her. “Did you mean it about helping us out?”

“Yeah. I mean...” She glanced from him to where the rest of the men were standing over the by the tables, talking amongst themselves. There were a few not-so-subtle looks in her direction. “Yeah.” At first it had been a matter of making herself useful to keep herself alive, but these men actually needed _help_ . The kind of help she'd be able to provide. And, you know, _fuck_ corruption. “Just probably should get my laptop.”

“We have equipment here.” He gestured to the table behind him.

“Yeah, okay. Do you have a private hook-up into the wide world of Stark?” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Didn't think so.”

“Just...” His lips twitched into an easy smile as he looked down at her, his hand coming out to brush over her upper arm where he'd gripped her earlier. “Stay close.”

“Yeah. Not going anywhere, trust me.”

* * *

 

“Jensen's not exactly happy.” Clay's amused-sounding voice pulled Darcy's attention away from her laptop. She looked over her shoulder to see him walking towards her, a glass of some amber liquid in each hand. “He's used to this being his thing.”

“Well, when his best friend is in a relationship with the owner of the world's leader in privatized security, he'll have access to all the same fun toys and tools I do.” She took the glass he offered her, slumping back on her stool. “You know, I would kill for a chair with a proper back, this is killing my shoulders.”

His glass went on the table beside her laptop and just a second later his hands were settling on her shoulders, thumbs digging into the sore muscles. “Why don't you take a break? It's getting late anyway.”

“I interned for an astrophysicist for a few years, I think that's made me a night owl for life.” She relaxed into his touch, only the knowledge that she could fall off the stool kept her from completely melting against him. “Plus I think if I stop, Roque will think I'm up to something and stick that knife he's been sharpening _at_ me somewhere that will make me bleed and die a lot.”

After another few seconds the hands left her shoulders, and one extended into her field of vision. She eyed it for a second before logging out of her computer, making sure to lock it out before closing it. She took Clay's hand and slid off the stool, the glass he'd given her still in his hand.

He made sure to pick up his own glass again before leading her to the set of metal stairs at the side of the room and up to one of the offices.

There was a desk in the middle of the room and a cot set up over along one wall. Darcy moved through to perch on top of the desk, the cot seemed a little suggestive. Not that Clay wasn't, you know, smoking hot, but she was pretty sure this wasn't an invitation to bump pelvises. Well, she amended as she took in the way his eyes moved over her. At least not _yet_.

He came over to lean against the top of the desk beside her, not quite sitting on it. He took a drink from his glass, and Darcy did too. And promptly made a face, setting it down on the hard surface beside her. Well, whiskey wasn't really her thing, but he seemed to be enjoying it.

Which made her stomach rumble, a reminder that she hadn't really had anything to eat in entirely too long. “You don't happen to have any food tucked away wherever you got that whiskey from, do you?”

“Sure.” He pushed away from the desk and went over to a mini-fridge, pulling out a plastic-wrapped sandwich and tossing it to her. “Here. It's not fillet mignon.”

“Yeah, but it's edible.” She unwrapped it and took a bite. It was standard convenience store fare, but it was food. “Better than what we had a lot of times when we were stuck in the middle of a science bender, I can tell you that. You got any water in there?”

Clay pulled out a second sandwich as well as a bottle of water before coming back to sit next to her. He unwrapped it, and for a few minutes the only sound in the room was the sound of them eating.

“So what happened?” she asked after swallowing her mouthful of food. “Why're you dead?”

“Those kids...” He trailed off and Darcy nodded. Yeah, she remembered the kids. “They wanted us to kill them. We said no, they did it anyway.” He shook his head, resting his food on his thigh. “It was supposed to be us. After _we_ killed the kids.” He took another look at his sandwich before resting the uneaten portion carefully on the plastic he'd left on the desk. “No survivors, no evidence.”

Darcy sighed, leaning over to rest her head against his shoulder. “Well. That fucking sucks.”

“Tell me about it.” He took a long drink of his whiskey, draining the glass before setting it behind him on the table. After a minute, his arm came around her, hand settling on her hip, warm through her jeans. “Then I fucked up.”

“Yeah. I heard.” Jensen... talked a lot. Mostly about a lady named Aisha. Not that _he'd_ ever gotten involved with a woman like that. “Got you back in the country, or so the story goes, so... That's a start, right?”

“You could've done that.” It wasn't a question.

“Sure. But I don't exactly spend a whole lot of time hanging around Bolivia.” She bumped her elbow against his side.

“You mean it?” He turned his head, he was looking down at her. “About getting us out of this?”

She shrugged, popping the last of her sandwich in her mouth and washing it down with some water before answering. “Yeah.”

“Why?” She could see his expression out of the corner of his eye, there was no trace of amusement.

Darcy let out a sigh, rolling her eyes. “I'm the kind of person who takes a two-year unpaid internship with someone because she's my friend and she needed someone to look out for her. Clint calls me a bleeding heart- not that he's any better. You guys were fucked hard by this shit because you wouldn't kill 25 kids? Yeah.” She nodded.

“Can I keep your number? Call you?”

She nudged him again. “Sure. I don't do flowers, though. Chocolate, though, feel free to bring lots of that.”

Clay chuckled at that, his body shaking against her side. “Not exactly what I meant.” There was a pause and his fingers squeezed against her hip. “You know, not that I wouldn't, but...”

“Oh, I've heard what you would do.” She lifted her head from his shoulder, turning to look up at him, a grin turning up the corners of her mouth. “Your tech guy has a lot to say on the subject. I don't think I'm crazy enough for you. But if you need a civilian with connections...” Her eyes searched his dark ones. “I'm almost done. I can find my own way home. Just... call me when you get out.”

“Oh, I'll call you.” There was heat in his eyes, or the potential for it. Wrong place, wrong time.

 

**Author's Note:**

> iTunes shuffle fic, Burn by Ellie Goulding, like pre-Darcy/Clay.
> 
> I DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS IS.


End file.
